Planning for the future

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Cultural integration

There is no suggestion in the medium to long-term that specific health and social care services would be merged to the point of being one entity with one homogenous group of workers. However, we may start to see joint standards of care between health and social services, better alignment, better workforce relations, more confident workers and unifying leadership. It is all well within our reach if we follow a person-centred approach to workforce planning.

‘The new working practices are constantly measured, monitored and reviewed internally and externally to keep apace of changes to budgets, demographics, new demands or learning needs. One way some are measuring cultural integration is with the “lanyard test” – to see if partnership staff attending meetings choose the integration joint board badge over their health board or local authority one. Most do.’
(The Lanyard Test, from ‘A View from 2025’)

Resources and signposting

• The Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (Iriss). Iriss’s scenario, the ‘New Normal World’, provides a broad sketch of what integration could really mean in 2025.
• The exercise of good leadership at all levels is key to successful cultural integration. The SSSC Step into Leadership website offers resources and information to develop leadership capabilities.

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Planning for the future by the Scottish Social Services Council is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://learn.sssc.uk.com.